


hold to love

by capricornia



Category: K-pop, SEVENTEEN (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Tennis, M/M, don't fact check me on this one guys, vague handwavy tennis stuff
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-09-18
Updated: 2020-09-18
Packaged: 2021-03-07 16:01:04
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,442
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26530303
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/capricornia/pseuds/capricornia
Summary: He scrolls through his phone on the drive back to the hotel. He’s got approximately eight million messages, and he just goes through his texts without opening any of them to see who’s sent him things. His mom, watching from his box this time, texted him a picture of his brother’s face as he watched Chan win. There are several messages from his cousins, watching in Korea. The family group chat has five hundred and six messages that Chan knows he’s going to have to actually read. He sees messages from Jun, Soonyoung, Seungcheol, even. Mark again. A few of his friends from school, a few friends from the juniors’ circuit, a few people from the pro tour. And buried in the middle of it all—Wonwoo.--Professional tennis AU. Wonwoo and Chan, somewhat-estranged friends, pair up to play doubles in Washington, D.C.—and with every day that passes, they get closer to playing against each other in the singles draw. Can their chemistry keep them on track to be friends and partners at the US Open grand slam just over a month away? Or will rain delays, revelations and nosy friends threaten to turn them into tour gossip fodder and bitter could-have-beens?
Relationships: Jeon Wonwoo/Lee Chan | Dino
Comments: 16
Kudos: 31
Collections: A Sip of Summer Wine





	hold to love

**Author's Note:**

> Scoring in tennis is a little weird. A match is divided into sets (you have to win best of 3 sets for all tournaments except men's grand slams, which are best of 5). The first person to win 6 games (usually by 2 games) wins the set. The points in each game are love (0) > 15 > 30 > 40\. If both players reach 40, that's a "deuce", and someone has to get an "advantage" before they win the game. It's confusing, and you can understand this fic without memorizing how it all works; don't worry.
> 
> While this fic does not deal explicitly with homophobia and largely pretends homophobia does not exist, it is heavily based on the real world, and so as our world is affected by homophobia, so is the world in this fic. I didn’t want to deal with that as I felt it would be too heavy for what this is supposed to be. However I do think I would be remiss not to mention that the tennis world is currently very homophobic. There are no currently active ATP (men’s tour) players who are out, although there are certainly gay players in the sport, as of course there are in every sector of life. The only former out male player I know of is Brian Vahaly, who came out 10 years after retirement, in 2017.
> 
> Additionally, this is a K-pop fic meshed into the real-life tennis world, but not completely. The tennis events that I mention are real events, and the (non-K-pop) players are real players. However, with the players especially, the real-life tennis world is more of a peripheral element, and so the ages and careers of certain players don't match up to real life. It's meant to be a fun AU, and so some of the achievements (especially Chan winning two grand slams in a row, because deserve) aren't exactly realistic. Just... don't think about it too much lol
> 
> Special thanks to Cody. <3
> 
> In the most predictable turn of events, this was the first Seventeen fic I ever started, back in May. Shoutout to the chat (chan chat) for that. 
> 
> Thanks for reading!

They call him all sorts of things—the Korean Boris Becker, Prince of Korea, Hope of the Next Generation, Future of Tennis. Some are more positive than others. Some are a little insulting, if he’s being honest, but his dad always says sometimes any press is good press, so. 

The names ring in his ears for hours after each interview. So does the noise of the crowd. He’s used to playing in front of people, has been doing it almost his whole life, but the crowds here in Paris—they’re just something else. There’s no way Chan can describe it. 

He showers the night after with the roar of the crowd still in his ears. The tiles of the bathroom seem to flash at him every time he moves the shower curtain the way his name flashed on the screen of the television in the lobby when he and his dad walked in. Lee Chan. 

_Lee Chan, how does it feel to be the youngest player ever to win a grand slam? Lee Chan, now that you’ve won Roland Garros, are your sights set for Wimbledon? Lee Chan, what do you do to stay calm under such pressure? Lee Chan, you’re here coached by your father, what has his tennis legacy meant to you? Lee Chan, can you believe it’s real; you’ve just won the French Open, here in Paris; how do you feel tonight?_

They’re all stupid questions. He’s proud of himself that he answered every one with a smile on his face. It wasn’t for the questions. It was for the sheer joy of winning.

He checks his phone as he towels off in the hotel bathroom. There are messages—one from his mom, who’s still in Korea with his brother. She got up early to watch his match. There’s one from Soonyoung, and a little _ding!_ tells him he has an Instagram comment from Jun on his latest post (a picture of some food he was eating somewhere two months ago), which makes Chan smile. 

He’s about to reply to Soonyoung when Mark texts him. S _econd RG in a row!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!_ it says. Chan reads it in Mark’s voice. They’d won the juniors tournament last year playing doubles together.

Chan sends him back two thumbs-up emoji, and a little clover.

Jun’s comment says _Congratulations, Dino_ with a few celebratory emoji as well. Chan likes the comment.

Soonyoung has sent two messages. One is just three exclamation points, and the second message just says _Wimbledon next_. There’s no question about it, like in the interviews. No _how do you feel_ , no _are you preparing_. Just him knowing Chan is looking to the future.

Chan sends him back an arm-flexing emoji.

••

He plays the 250-level event in Stuttgart and makes the semis, then he plays the 500-level event in Halle and loses in the quarterfinals to Jun, and then it’s time for Wimbledon and he feels like France was years ago instead of just a few weeks. In the time it’s taken to get to England, Chan has been interviewed by what feels like every television station in Germany; he’s been congratulated on Instagram by more random celebrities than he knows what to do with; and Roger Federer, Chung Hyeon and Martina Hingis herself have all mentioned him on Twitter. And Choi Seungcheol has asked him to play Davis Cup next season for Team Korea.

••

He wins Wimbledon.

He remembers, in the moment that he falls on the grass, what it was like as a small child watching other players’ celebrations on court. He doesn’t eat the grass. He doesn’t cry. He just opens his eyes and looks at the clear sky as the rush of crowd noise washes over him.

••

He scrolls through his phone on the drive back to the hotel. He’s got approximately eight million messages, and he just goes through his texts without opening any of them to see who’s sent him things. His mom, watching from his box this time, texted him a picture of his brother’s face as he watched Chan win. (When he opens the message, Chan knows, the image will be etched into his mind forever.) There are several messages from his cousins, watching in Korea. The family group chat has five hundred and six messages that Chan knows he’s going to have to actually read, which he’s dreading and excited for in equal measure. 

He sees messages from Jun, Soonyoung, Seungcheol, even. Mark again. A few of his friends from school, a few friends from the juniors’ circuit, a few people from the pro tour. And buried in the middle of it all—Wonwoo.

••

“Hey!” Soonyoung picks up on the second ring.

“Hey,” Chan says softly. The screen glitches a little and catches on Soonyoung’s frown. His hair is in his eyes, and Chan _misses_ him suddenly with more ferocity than he thought he would have. Soonyoung didn’t play Wimbledon, didn’t play grass at all. He took a break from the tour after Madrid to get surgery, and Chan was fine until he realizes now that Soonyoung should be here, that they should be celebrating together. 

“Channie,” Soonyoung says, “I can’t believe it. We watched the whole thing, of course.” Chan isn’t sure who he means by we, but he doesn’t ask.

“Wonwoo texted me,” Chan says.

“Who?”

“Jeon Wonwoo?”

Soonyoung frowns again. The connection is better now, and Chan watches his expression slide into confusion with an ache in his chest. “You know him?” Soonyoung says. “No offense but I thought you were, like, five years old, and Wonwoo is in his own world. He knows you?”

Chan smiles automatically at the teasing about his age. It bothers him from everyone else, but Soonyoung has always been allowed a pass on things, ever since he kicked Chan’s ass in his first tournament on the pro tour and then immediately decided Chan was his new favorite person.

“He used to be my mentor, kind of,” he says. “We had a thing.”

Soonyoung raises his eyebrows.

“He taught at the academy, you know, before he turned pro,” Chan explains. “We didn’t work out.”

 _Know_ is a strong word. Chan has seen Wonwoo around on the pro tour. It’s hard to avoid people, especially if you’re not intentionally trying to avoid them. And Chan isn’t trying to avoid Wonwoo. 

Wonwoo’s the one who hasn’t reached out to him. Chan made the first move months and months ago, and then the second move, and he’s come up with nothing. Sometimes there just isn’t a connection anymore.

He remembers Wonwoo’s stare, the way his frown had felt directed at Chan when his stance wasn’t right. The way his smile made it seem like he could make the flowers bloom just for him. How his voice got higher when he laughed. Chan watched him, after he turned pro. He played against Jun a lot in singles until they started doing doubles together, and they’ve been snagging big titles as a team for a few years. Chan is distantly aware of this, because he’s always paid attention to the people on the pro tour, as a junior because he knew he wanted to learn from them, and now because he wants to play against them. 

Jun’s never brought up Wonwoo to Chan when they’ve hung out. Jun might not even know he and Wonwoo know each other aside from being from the same country. 

“No way you were mentored by Jeon Wonwoo,” Soonyoung says. “How did I not know that?”

“I don’t know,” Chan laughs. “What’s he ranked now?”

“Dude, he’s, like, number seventeen in the world or something. Something big.”

Chan thinks about how many points he’s racked up in the last few months. He’d like to be humble and say he doesn’t know exactly how many points he’s won and then lost and then won again in his run from Roland-Garros to Stuttgart to Halle to Wimbledon, but that would be a lie.

“I’ve seen him play; he was in Davis Cup the last two years,” Soonyoung says. “Played really well against China. Blew Croatia right out of the water; you should have seen Coric’s face.”

“Oh,” Chan says, because there isn’t really anything else to say. He watched those Davis Cup matches, or at least, he had them open on his laptop while he struggled with his math requirements. He doesn’t remember Borna Coric’s face, or Wonwoo or anyone else. He mostly had it on just to have it on.

He used to watch Wonwoo a lot, actually, which is how he knew Jun’s playing style well enough to strike up a conversation with him when they met in D.C. at a hot dog cart on the National Mall.

He’d spent hours in his bedroom trying to imitate Wonwoo’s serve. It was somehow both more and less embarrassing to copy from videos than from his memories of Wonwoo at the old academy.

He grew out of that phase, but not before he’d realized that he’d maybe had a crush on Wonwoo. Like, a big one, if he’s being honest. It was all hypothetical at that point anyway. Wonwoo had left the academy, had left Chan and the others on the juniors’ tour to pursue bigger and better things. He was Chan’s famous former friend-slash-mentor that nobody outside the extremely dedicated tennis world had heard of. Chan mentioned knowing him exactly once, to a girl at school, and she looked at him blankly until he realized having known a side of Jeon Wonwoo, ranked number 519 on the pro tour, wasn’t going to get him anywhere.

“What did Wonwoo say?” Soonyoung asks. The trillion-won question. The part that’s been bugging at Chan all evening.

Chan looks out past his phone at the dark TV set. The twin lights next to the hotel bed stare back at him like eyes. “He just said to take it easy and be careful of how the tour treats youngsters,” he says. “To take care of myself.”

He signed it _Wonwoo_ , which is the only way Chan knew it was even him. He didn’t realize Wonwoo had his number. He doesn’t have the same one he had when he was twelve, and he doubts Wonwoo has the same one, either. Wonwoo and Soonyoung are friends, he knows, but clearly Wonwoo didn’t ask Soonyoung for his number, which means he must have gotten it from Jun. 

“He’s right,” Soonyoung says. Chan bites back his _I know_. Just because Wonwoo is right doesn’t mean he has to like it. “People get burned out when they have a lot of pressure on them,” Soonyoung continues. “You _should_ be careful. Look at Zverev. If you win the finals in London this year I better not hear you complain about it all next season because suddenly you can’t serve or whatever.”

“I won’t,” Chan says, because he won’t complain.

“Why are you so worked up about this, Channie?” Soonyoung asks. Chan hates it, just a little bit, that he can read him so well. 

“I don’t know,” he says finally. Soonyoung smiles that soft smile of his, the one Chan really loves. 

“That’s okay, hey?” Soonyoung says. “Just tell him thank you or something. It’s sweet that he’s looking out for you. Even if you are, I don’t know, estranged or whatever. And then celebrate,” he adds. “You won Wimbledon!” he shouts, voice coming out all scrambled like the auditory equivalent of a screen glitch filtered through the phone, and Chan grins.

••

He immediately loses in Hamburg in the second round. He plays D.C., pulls Mark in for doubles. They lose in the first round to Cho Kyuhun and Park Chanyeol, and Chan beats Johnny Suh in the first round and feels like he’s on top of the world before he loses the next day to Kim Minseok. He plays Toronto, hoping to gain those points back in the Masters 1000 event, and loses in the third round to Canada’s Felix Auger-Aliassime. He plays the Monday of Cincinnati, and is only seeded in the U.S. Open because he won the previous two grand slams. He crashes out in the second round to Kim Minseok again, a man pushing thirty, and he decides to take the two weeks the tournament gives him to go home.

••

He plays Shenzhen and stays over at Jun’s. Jun’s home is nice. His brother reminds Chan of Geon when he was tiny. His parents smile kindly at Chan and his dad, and Jun takes him to his favorite restaurant. Chan is sure they won’t meet anyone aside from really local paparazzi there, and he’s right -- there are just a few cameras outside, and all but one are there for Jun -- but it is a surprise to see Xu Minghao sitting at the back of the restaurant, wearing a big floppy hat and an expensive-looking suit and stylish sunglasses. Chan thinks they’re stylish, anyway. He doesn’t really pay that much attention to those sorts of things.

Jun immediately goes to him, and Minghao makes room like he was expecting Jun, which, Chan realizes, maybe he was. Minghao smiles at Chan, and Chan kind of melts. Minghao smiles like he’s sharing a secret, allowing the world to witness the fact that he’s thinking his thoughts but keeping the contents of them close, known only to a select few. He takes his glasses off, and his eyes smile, too, bright and knowing.

“Dino?” he says, using Chan’s nickname from the juniors’ circuit.

“Lee Chan,” Chan reintroduces himself. He already knows who Minghao is, but Minghao introduces himself anyway like he’s any regular person who just happens to be named Xu Minghao and not the subject of multiple fashion blogs and a whole Instagram account dedicated to his mullet. (Chan has seen it. It’s quite impressively-curated, if a little creepy.)

“It’s good to meet you,” Minghao says in lilting Korean. “Junhui’s told me about you.”

Chan tries not to preen and probably fails. Jun laughs at him, and Minghao hits him upside the head for it.

“What’s the best thing to eat?” Chan asks Jun, and Jun and Minghao proceed to hold what sounds like an intense conversation in Mandarin. They order a lot of food, because on top of the three of them being athletes, they both insist that Chan is a growing boy who needs all the nutrients he can get. Jun says he’s paying, so Chan doesn’t complain too much.

“Who’s your first match against?” Minghao asks him.

“Jeonghan,” Jun answers for him. Chan’s mouth is full of food.

“Good luck,” Minghao says. 

Chan nods his thanks. He’s seen Yoon Jeonghan play, has played him a few times in local events way back when. He’s not exactly a straightforward player. Chan is going to need all the luck he can get.

••

He loses to Jeonghan. The international press tears him to shreds, has been waiting to ever since he won in Paris, really. Someone even suggests he’d doped for the French Open and Wimbledon, and a rumor goes around about it on Twitter.

He absolutely doesn’t cry about it in Jun’s childhood bedroom at 2 AM. Jun doesn’t come into his room, doesn’t hold his head against his chest, doesn’t sit with him and rock him back and forth.

He sometimes thinks experiences no one will ever talk about to the public aren’t even real experiences at all.

••

_Take care of yourself_ , the message from Wonwoo said. It rings in Chan’s head the same way it has almost every day since Wimbledon. Take care of yourself. Take it easy. Young stars fly high and burn out fast, because the tour uses them up. Take care of yourself.

The sentence has sort of become a mantra, but one that comes into his head at the worst times, like when his serve isn’t working on court, or when he watches the clock on his phone tick inexorably toward the early hours of the morning as he stares at it and does nothing, knowing he’s sabotaging himself and unable to do anything about it.

It’s detached from the person who sent it in his head, like Wonwoo is some sort of messenger from some other dimension, just delivering an idea into his brain and then disappearing in a puff of smoke. He doesn’t really think about Wonwoo other than when Jun mentions him. He forgot to ask Jun if he was the one who gave Wonwoo his number, or maybe he doesn’t really care. The knowledge of his old crush seems like something that sits in a box in his chest, next to other mundane things he carries with him, like the drawings of his family he made in grade school, and the memory of the first time he won a tournament with Mark, and the way Soonyoung laughed at his joke the first time. Things that make him who he is, no doubt. Things he doesn’t think about.

 _Take care of yourself_ , he thinks now as he watches his dad get their luggage off the conveyor belt in Beijing. His dad used to play, has coached for years. He must know intimately the pressures and the struggles of being on your and having what feels like every camera in the world pressing into your face everywhere you go. He must see Chan’s tired face and know that this isn’t working. 

Chan knows he sees his serve, how his feet drag during practice, and is disappointed. He’s his _dad_ , and he must see his son’s pain. But Chan’s dream is his dream, and something closes in Chan’s throat at even the thought of asking his dad to throw it away.

It ends up not mattering, anyway. They get takeout in their hotel room and his dad suggests over his noodles that Chan might want to consider taking a break after Beijing, 

Chan didn’t think relief could have so strong a taste.

••

He takes two weeks off and watches dramas with Geon and plays video games with Soonyoung and sleeps in his old room with the smell of his mom’s cooking and his dad’s cologne seeped into the walls.

Then he trains.

He watches the Masters 1000 event in Paris. Jun plays doubles with Wonwoo. Neither of them makes the finals in London, but Wonwoo is close, number 16 in singles, and as a team they're at #10.

Chan is supposed to be ranked #1 in singles, having gained 4000 points from both the French Open and Wimbledon on top of his other wins this season. He'd play, except that his serve doesn't even hold up in practice, and he's so stressed out he can't think straight. Typical teenage anxiety bullshit, or whatever. He hates it. 

So his ranking wouldn't matter. He'd lose all his matches in London anyway, if his match against Jeonghan in Shenzhen is anything to go by. He got bagelled in the first set, losing six games to zero, and managed to avoid such an embarrassment in the second, losing six games to two. Jeonghan was ranked number 47 in the live rankings at the time. He moved up after Chan, beat Alexei Popyrin too before losing to Andrey Rublev. Chan still sees the scoreline burned into his eyelids right before he sleeps.

He trains during London. He can’t watch the finals. His mom watches with Geon. Auger-Aliassime wins while Chan is on his hundred and twelfth press-up.

••

His first match back gets him press again. Most of it is hopeful, some of it is disparaging, but overall it’s just a lot of pressure. He won both Roland-Garros and Wimbledon, then crashed and burned. He was the Future of Korean Tennis, or whatever. There’s a lot riding on his shoulders—shoulders that have started to broaden out, now. He’d like to say it doesn’t affect him, but it does. Of course it does.

He loses in the round of 32 and then loses in the quarterfinals of the next tournament, then makes the semifinals after that, and then it’s basically normal from there. After a while, the only press he gets is the regular tennis stuff. Post-match interviews, random ATP videos about traditional food or silly games they make him play to give the sport a fun look for the public, photoshoots with sponsors, that sort of thing. He Googles himself once, then realizes he probably shouldn’t do that. He likes people knowing his name, but he prefers people to actually know what they’re talking about when they discuss him. Most of the stuff he finds is speculation about the Davis Cup, but there’s some weird stuff out there, too. Some bad attitudes.

He gets some more sponsors. Nike was his early on, and he’s done more ads for toothpaste than he can remember. Some snacks manufacturer asks to use his face on their packaging, one in Korea and one in the United States. They make him up like a kpop star, and he sucks his mouth against his teeth the entire time he’s not grinning brightly yet shyly at the camera. He switches racquet deals. He renegotiates with Nike. He moves up in the world, and in the live rankings.

He injures his knee training and can’t make the early Davis Cup matches, or the Australian leg of the tour. Seungcheol sends him a string of encouraging emoji, and says he’s always available to talk if Chan needs it. It may or may not make Chan tear up a little.

He watches the Korea versus China Davis Cup matches on his birthday with his laptop propped up on his brother’s bed and his brother sitting next to him on his phone. Seungcheol seems like a good leader. He plays doubles with Jeonghan against Jun and Minghao. Chan honestly spends more time watching Jun and Minghao play; the way they move together makes it seem like they know where each other is without even having to look. He wonders how long they’ve known each other. Probably a long time. Jun said they hadn’t played doubles much, back in Shenzhen, but he can tell they’ve been practicing. They could probably win a slam together, with the way they move.

They’re beautiful to watch. Now that Chan’s stuck at home with a propped-up leg, forced to do nothing but eat and sleep and stretch, he has a lot more time to appreciate tennis for the sheer beauty of it. Minghao hits the ball with such precision. Chan spends a lot of time looking at his footwork. He wonders how many hours Minghao spends running between cones and things training for it. 

Jun’s usual jokey personality completely disappears when he’s on the court. He’s graceful, slicing the ball down the court to Seungcheol, who misses and then gets pushed by Jeonghan. Everything looks like it’s done with intention. The camera zooms in on Jun’s face when he serves, and Chan’s stomach swoops downward. Jun’s looking out, not right at the camera, but close, with that thousand-yard stare like he can see right into Chan’s soul. He smiles a little—smirks, really—and jumps up to serve.

The thing is, Chan has never sat down to appreciate Jun’s game before. He’s appreciated it when they practice or play together, of course, but usually Chan is trying to win, and he can’t see the expression on Jun’s face. Chan feels a little queasy with the intensity of it.

Okay, he knows himself. He knows what he’s feeling.

It’s jealousy.

Chan wants to look like that on court, wants to have that much grace and that much power. He wishes he were taller, of course. He’s almost stopped growing by now, his physio says, but he swears that he’ll be the most graceful player under six feet on the tour someday. Jun looks like a siren, or a demon, or something else out of some anime. Something that draws Chan in. No wonder Minghao smiled when Jun walked over to his table in the Shenzhen restaurant, he thinks. No wonder Wonwoo plays with him so often.

He wonders why Wonwoo skipped Davis Cup. Maybe so he wouldn’t have to play against Jun. Maybe he’s just too big for that kind of local stuff, being the current highest-ranked South Korean player.

He remembers the last time he saw Wonwoo, in the locker room in Beijing. They brushed past each other—Chan was coming back after his first-round win against American Joshua Hong; Wonwoo was going out to face Stefanos Tsitsipas from Greece. Wonwoo didn’t say anything, and neither did Chan. Chan looked back, though, at Wonwoo’s figure as he walked down the hall.

He’s pretended, in the last four years or so, that he doesn’t remember every expression of Wonwoo’s body, every degree of head tilt and what it meant. It’s easier, when he sees him across the practice courts, or in hotel lobbies, to pretend. 

The thing is, Chan probably sees more than Wonwoo wants him to see. And Wonwoo walked past him after his win against Joshua Hong and waited until Chan was behind him in the locker room, and then he let go of the tension coating his shoulders and smiled.

••

He grows up. He develops a reputation, a persona—creates or grows into one, whichever. Everyone knows who he is: fierce little Lee Chan, who looks out at the court with the expression fans have termed his “hunting dog” face, who gives both the crowd and his opponents little grimacing smiles before he aces them out, who flirts with reporters and gives press answers that are sometimes bitingly sarcastic, sometimes awkward. Lee Chan, whose name gets mispronounced by journalists and commentators, who tries to make friends across language lines (thanks to Vernon and Mark), whose Korean friends cling to him like ducklings following their mother. Lee Chan, the future of tennis still, maybe. 

He plays Davis Cup matches the next year and Wonwoo doesn’t, and then Wonwoo plays and he doesn’t, and then suddenly he’s twenty-one and has two grand slam titles and six Masters 500 titles and one Masters 1000 title from Monte Carlo last year, and he came close to winning Rome but didn’t quite make it this year, and he got good results in Roland-Garros and Wimbledon, making the fourth round and then the quarterfinals in singles, and he and Yerim made the fourth round in mixed doubles, and then it’s time for Atlanta’s 250 event again.

He gets the text as he’s checking his phone right before his shower after his first-round match (6-2, 6-4; he’s on a streak of winning in straight sets until he loses a match).

All it says is _Think about it seriously_ , and it’s from Jun, which doesn’t make a lot of sense, because there’s no context, and because Jun texts him only very rarely. He sends back a question mark.

He’s just gotten all his hair products out of his bag when his phone dings again. It’s a text from Wonwoo: _Call me._

He video calls Wonwoo. Wonwoo picks up after what feels like ten minutes of ringing, and Chan realizes as soon as he sees Wonwoo’s surprised face that he’s shirtless and still sweaty from his match, and that his hair is stuck up against his face at an odd angle, pushed that way by his headband. Wonwoo doesn’t look much better. His hair looks soft, like he’s freshly showered, but it’s dim where he is and he looks tired, like he just woke up, or maybe like he hasn’t gone to sleep yet. Chan is pretty sure he’s playing in Hamburg, six hours ahead of Atlanta.

“Dino,” Wonwoo says. Chan purses his lips at the old nickname.

“Wonwoo-hyung,” he says, and props his phone against the wall next to the sink so he can adjust the towel wrapped around his waist. Wonwoo looks like he’s frowning. “What’s going on?” he asks.

“Washington is next week,” Wonwoo says.

Okay, that throws Chan for a bit of a loop. It’s not exactly urgent or exciting news. “I know,” he says.

Wonwoo closes his eyes for a second. “I was wondering if you’d want to enter the doubles draw,” he says. Chan stares at him for a solid twenty seconds, trying to figure out of it’s a practical joke or not, but unless Wonwoo’s changed quite a bit, he doesn’t really do that sort of thing. “Together,” Wonwoo adds unnecessarily.

“I wasn’t planning to do doubles this tournament,” Chan says.

“Ah,” says Wonwoo, and for some reason he sounds really disappointed.

“Doesn’t mean it isn’t a good idea,” Chan adds quickly, because he’s a fucking masochist, or something. And it is a good idea. Wonwoo is intense; people like him. People turn out for him in a way they don’t for Chan, despite the way the press still calls him the future of tennis after five years on tour struggling for the kind of big results that make the history books. He realizes this is what Jun texted him about. _Think about it seriously_. “Why?” he asks Wonwoo. He narrows his eyes. “Did Jun dare you or something?”

It’s a bit of a low thing to say. Jun and Wonwoo haven’t played together for six months, and Chan doesn’t know if they even still hang out.

Wonwoo swallows, and Chan watches his throat shift under his skin. “You can say no,” he says, which doesn’t answer Chan’s question. “You can back out.”

Chan feels the bile slam into his throat like some sort of shot made of longing and resentment. “I’m not going to back out,” he says. He doesn’t say _that seems more like your style_ , because tour gossip was awful when he and Jun stopped playing together, and Jun didn’t answer any of Chan’s texts for three weeks, and the official line was that Wonwoo was pursuing singles again, but everyone thought he and Jun had had some sort of fight and that Wonwoo cut it off.

He still doesn’t know if Wonwoo leaving _him_ all those years ago had anything to do with him, if the way Wonwoo had pretty much ignored him on the pro tour was somehow his fault, if there was something that he just missed. But if Wonwoo doesn’t think about it anymore then he’s not going to bring it up. The memory of it doesn’t sting anymore. It’s just numb, like it happened to someone else, like it’s something to give his old self drive and character development, or whatever. The tour makes people grow up fast.

“You’ll do it?” Wonwoo asks.

 _Think about it seriously_. Why does it feel like there’s something he’s missing?

“Yeah,” Chan says. He feels confident about his Atlanta draw, and he’s riding a wave of good results. They’ll probably lose in the first round of D.C. anyway, and then he’ll be able to focus on the singles draw. “Yeah, okay.”

Wonwoo smiles. Something in Chan’s throat makes itself known, like the heavy promise of rain in the summer sky, curling around his muscles and settling there, into his breaths.

“Where are you staying?” Wonwoo asks him. Chan doesn’t actually know. Wonwoo gives him the name of his own hotel. “It’s an easy drive there,” Wonwoo says, like Chan doesn’t know how to navigate the Washington, D.C. subway system, like he hasn’t been wandering around the city every other summer for the last five years.

“Thanks,” Chan says.

“No problem,” says Wonwoo. Their conversation has turned stilted, like Chan’s press conferences were all during his terrible season.

“I’ve got to go shower,” Chan says after a beat of silence. He’s desperate for more of a connection, _something_. Complain and commiserate about something, his brain tells him, so he says, “Why we play in Atlanta in July is something I will never figure out.”

Wonwoo laughs slightly. Chan feels warm. “You could have chosen a different sport,” Wonwoo says.

“Like what?” Now it’s Chan’s turn to laugh. “With my parents as tennis coaches? No way. It’s in my blood. Goodnight, hyung,” he says. 

Wonwoo’s nose wrinkles slightly when he smiles. Chan had forgotten about that. The teenage years he spent analyzing and then remembering Wonwoo’s every move have been filed into a locked folder in his brain. Bye-bye, Dino. Adulthood makes him a completely different person. 

“Sleep well,” Wonwoo says. “Good luck tomorrow. Vernon likes trick shots.”

“I know,” Chan says, voice coming out a little hoarse. He played with Vernon during the Davis Cup matches against Japan.

He hangs up and showers until he’s dizzy, with water hot enough to make him feel like some sort of boiled prune.

**Author's Note:**

> To hold to love is to win every point in a service game, making the score for that game 40-0. (A break to love is when the person who isn't serving wins 40-0.)
> 
> Please let me know if there are tennis terms I should explain in the notes!
> 
> playlist: [hold to love](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/55ygkQiROHTPC0fUsZbceS?si=19p5zzTeRViUTTOXeVfUfA)  
> [pinterest board](https://www.pinterest.com/horatioils/hold-to-love/)


End file.
